Buddha Sasana and Religious Affairs Deputy Minister M. K. D. S. Gunawardena told Parliament yesterday that no cases had been reported pertaining to unethical conversion of people to any religion.

Responding to a question raised by UNP Colombo District MP Ravi Karunanayake, who demanded to know what action the government had taken against forcefully converting of people, the minister said that such a matter had not arisen as there were no cases reported against converting people from one religion to another.

Asked to state to the House the percentages in Sri Lankan population on the basis of each religion separately, the deputy minister said that there were 14,222,844 (70.2%) Buddhists, 2,554,606 (12.6%) Hindus, 1,967,227 (9.7%) Muslims, 1,237,038 (6.1%) Roman Catholics, 272,568 (1.3%) Christians and 9,440 (0.0%) persons of other religions in the country as at 2012. Those details had been taken from the Census conducted in the same year. The total population of the country at the time of the Census was 20,263,723, the deputy minister said.